CeramicsObituaryJohn Ward obituary
Potter whose stoneware exploring fundamental forms had an otherworldly poise
John Ward, who has died aged 84, was one of Britain’s pre-eminent studio potters. In a career that extended over five decades he forged a distinctive body of work, with each vessel unique.
Hand-built using flattened strips of clay, burnished with a pebble and then decorated with a range of matt glazes, from deep brown-black to his perhaps most recognisable black-and-white patterned and green-and-white striped bowls, his stoneware pots represent a continuous evolution of a series of fundamental forms: the bowl, the shouldered pot, the gourd-shaped jar, the disc-shaped vessel. Although these recall the shapes of functional pottery, John was clear: “I make pots which can be used but with no prescribed function. This gives me the freedom to explore a wider variety of hollow forms.”
On the other hand, he also chose to dissociate himself from contemporaries who more explicitly pursued purely sculptural ideas. “I would still describe myself as a potter rather than a sculptor, with a strong connection to the design world and also to architecture.” In saying this John defined himself as a potter in a continuous tradition of ceramic vessels reaching back into our furthest human history. As the ceramics historian and critic David Whiting said: “[John’s] best pots speak eloquently of the limitless language of the bowl and the globular jar, their sculptural and metaphorical resonances.”
John’s choice of pottery was by no means obvious. Born in Islington, north London, he was the second of three sons of George Ward, a butcher, and Marjorie (nee Lay), who did the firm’s accounts. He also had an elder sister, Brenda. In 1941, John’s father died of rheumatic fever aged just 33. Evacuated first to a farm and then to Blackburn, the family returned to London at the end of 1945 to a new home in a recently erected prefab in Sedgehill, south-east London. John went to the local primary school, Elfrida, before gaining a place at Haberdasher Aske’s grammar school in New Cross. Neither institution offered arts and crafts, and John was encouraged to pursue his talent for maths and physics. This interest is evident in the geometries at play in his pots.
John did however report one vivid memory of being taken, on a primary school trip, to a pottery, where the class modelled figures that were later glazed. John recalled: “When they were returned to the school, it was such a surprise to see the magical transformation that had taken place.” A later trip with his brother Barrie to Fairlight Glen, near Hastings, where they discovered quantities of blue-grey clay squeezing up through the shingle beach, led to weeks of home experiments. But at the end of school, in the uncertain postwar world, John plumped first for a job in the research department of a glass factory, which included study for a BSc degree. Finding the academic study tedious, he left, and two years of national service were followed by a series of jobs in early software development, wallpaper design and then a stint as an accountant in a soap factory in Wapping before he chanced upon a blackboard advertising jobs at the BBC and, after three months training, became a studio cameraman.
A three-and-a-half-year stint at the corporation, with its irregular hours, split around nine months’ travel, left John with leisure to visit museums and, more importantly, take evening classes in ceramics. The hobby became an overriding passion, with John drawn strongly to the ancient pottery in the British museum, and to the work of the immigrant European potters Hans Coper and Lucie Rie, then frequently on show in London. In 1966, taking advantage of the postwar expansion of free tertiary education, John applied to Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts, where Rie and Coper were visiting tutors, starting on the foundation course that autumn at the age of 28.
Over the next four years, under the tutelage of Dick Kendall, Colin Pearson, John Minshaw and Ian Godfrey, whom John especially admired, he developed his particular approach to building pots. The use of flat coils was a technique not taught at Camberwell, and right from the beginning most of John’s pots tended not to have a pronounced foot, but to rise directly from the surface, “a clean lift-off”, as he would say. He experimented independently with glazes, recognising that glaze and form should work together, and developing his characteristic muted palette of matt glazes.
It was on the foundation course that John met Philippa Hulton, whom he married in 1970, the year he graduated. The interest of influential gallerists and critics, including Peter Dingley, Henry Rothschild and Tim Boon, encouraged John to believe he could make a living from his work, and for eight years he balanced potting with teaching at Sydenham adult education college.
A decisive break came in 1979 when John and Philippa moved with their family to a cottage in north Pembrokeshire, in Wales, and John abandoned teaching for full-time pottery. Hand-building is slow work, and John sold all the pots he made through a network of galleries, as well as internationally. Although he was not part of fashionable mainstream developments in contemporary ceramics in the 1980s and 90s, there were times when determined collectors, sharing their quiet admiration, would queue at dawn outside galleries on exhibition opening days, their purchases limited by the gallerists to ensure fairness. Younger fans include the British fashion designer Jonathan Anderson.
Although John’s pots gradually began to reflect the geology, vegetation and light of his new environment, they retained a refinement and otherworldly poise that sees them resonate as much with ancient pots from China, Egypt, Persia and the Cyclades, and with the sculpture and architecture of the 20th century, as with traditional notions of rural British pottery. Never cheap, but modestly priced, since 2016 his pots have seen a steep rise in value at auction. In 2017, in declining health, John made his last pot.
He is survived by Philippa, his children, Anna, Matthew and Benjamin, five grandchildren, and his younger brother, Norman.
John Ward, potter, born 24 November 1938; died 14 February 2023
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaJmiqa6vsMOeqqKfnmR%2FcX6SaKSaql9lg3C2zqGlZq%2BRp7Fuu8Giq66Zoq4%3D